I've done my share of music piracy and a pretty big one. I don't feel too bad about it. I wasn't earning money and couldn't afford to buy this music back then.

The other reason that came up later is the modern mastering quality. It is quite poor (because of things like compression and noise-reduction). For older records (which I listen to a lot) you're much better snatching some 1980s CD or even better an original vinyl copy. The audio quality will simply be much better. The prices of these ones can be astronomically high, where you can find quality vinyl rips (vinyl recordings converted to digital formats) on the web for free. Of course, when downloading such free versions, you could still purchase any original copy to support the artists.

For big labels artists most (I'm not sure but I read somewhere that it can even get up to 90%) of the money goes to the recording company, not the artist himself. Your money supports not exactly what you'll want it to. And so I feel it's more the industry that would benefit from stoping piracy than the artists themselves.

I've had really great experiences on the pirating sites I've participated in (most notably what.cd). They were great communities that are not about money. They're full of music lovers - people who rip obscure CDs, vinyls, discuss them with passion. They have nothing to earn, people just share music there out of love, because they want it to be heard.

And don't you think that the artists' main intention should be to just reach the audience no matter if it's through a pirated or a legal copy? I understand he must also earn money, but being an artist is not a regular job that one take just to make a living.

In the end I think I'll give up TrackMania, at least for now. It'll be better, if I spend this time practising on the guitar, reading and looking for a job. Maybe after I'll find a job, I'll give it a try.

That is a really interesting video indeed. I haven't realized that the mechanics possibilities are limiting the ways of expression of game producers.

Nice to hear that. Good luck to you both : ).

I'll pass on it now. I wouldn't mind the marks at all, but I don't think it's exactly what I'm looking for and I already have pretty big pile of books to read. Still thank you for the offer.

It seems like an interesting story. I'll write it down and maybe get and read it sometime.

Not my favourite band, but I love this song. Great lyrics.

Probably the nicest thing I've read here. Thanks for sharing it. Hope your mom somehow worked things out since then.

You're right telling that there are a lot of good video games around there. My view is probably more pessimistic, because these are simply not the ones which I see people around me playing. And just as you I've had some bad experiences with hardcore gamers.

I did play the first part of Geometry Wars. It was nice.

Haven't heard about that classification. It looks helpful indeed.

As for TrackMania... I also had great times with TrackMania Sunrise. Ah, my mind wandered to the hours spent on nailing the tracks for an Author Medal... And then the next one.

I always thought it's such a neat game, because it's stripped of all of those unimportant features you have in other games - like earning some reputation, money, new cars, some poor background stories. In TrackMania all you're left is the challenge (as you mentioned) to do it faster than the previous time.

All this talk about TrackMania made me want to play it...

Were you upset your parents didn't allow you to play video games when you were young? Do you now think it was a good decision?

I've been looking for handwritten fonts myself only recently. I wanted to use it for one small part of text in my CV. I settled on Christopher Hand and the CV turned out really cool.

I agree that old titles on average basis were so much better than the current ones. It seems especially paradoxical when you consider how poorer the computer powers were back then. In many cases even the outward gameplay possibilities were limited by that. Still the whole experience was deeper and more diversified and that's what should really matter. Current games are mostly about audio-visual fireworks, but shallow when you look deeper than that.

Speaking for slow I had a lot of fun listening to reversed version of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row". Some people in the comments were hearing a lot of different things in the lyrics.

It seems you posted your question without any tag. No one (other than people who follow directly you) will be able to see your post. Add a tag to it. #askhubski would probably be good.

As for your question I don't know how to see a list of users online (if there exists such a feature). But I think you can use chatter feature to emulate that.

I found it searching for almost the same term : ). Only I used DuckDuckGo instead of Google.

I prefer movies. The only TV show I've watched in my adult life was Twin Peaks and Lars von Trier's Riget.

Few days ago I watched a documentary Paradise Lost. A disturbing story about 3 teenagers being sentenced for life (one of them for death) for murders of 3 boys on a very poor evidence with a lot of inconsistencies. Some DNA tests made few years ago freed all of them.

A week ago I've been in a cinema with a friend. There were 3 animations played (two shorts and one full feature): Hedgehog in the Fog, Tale of Tales and Watership Down. I liked all of them, but the first and last mentioned one really stunned me, giving me shivers more than a few times and even few tears. Can't recommend you enough watching Hedgehog in the Fog. It's only 15 minutes but such a memorable video. I think you can even find it on YouTube.

What's wrong with buying books? I find the info in books (although I can't say about the average, as I always do some research to find some best ones in the subject) generally valuable, while in Internet it's more hit and miss with much more percentage trashy content. And I guess I simply like that feel and the fact that I'm off of the screen for a while.

I'm going vegan, as I feel it can do more good for the animal welfare.

Yeah, I also find the title bit misleading, but the other points that the article makes are much better.

I had no idea we're close! Still it's nice, thanks.